New clichés for love

Greeting cards still exist. Okay, at some level I knew they hadn’t become extinct, exactly, but when was the last time you saw one? I saw one when a friend and I ducked into a small stationery store. Someone in her office was retiring. She wanted one of those cards that everyone can scribble you-will-be-missed messages on, only to discover, a few months later, that the person isn’t being missed after all. Still, it’s important to find the right kind of you-will-be-missed card – sentimental, yet not overly so; funny, yet not funny enough to make the recipient think no one was getting sentimental – and while my friend was engaged in that endeavour, I looked around.

I saw get-well cards, thank-you cards, cards for teachers and best-mom-evers. There was even a card for a first birthday – because, you know, one-year-olds like nothing better than to read congratulatory messages with lots of exclamation points. And then there were the cards that could be clubbed under the “romance” genre – the I-love-you cards, the happy-engagement cards, the anniversary cards. These haven’t changed at all. The same clichés, moonlight and roses and silhouettes of lovers. Some corner of me kept saying that if it has to be a flower, then – given the average Indian, um, shape – shouldn’t it be a lotus? But even that will wilt and die. Someone, sometime decided that these pretty ephemeralities are the truest symbols of everlasting love.

And I’m saying maybe it’s time for an update. I’m saying maybe we need new symbols, new ways of proclaiming love. I love you like free wi-fi. Go ahead, laugh – and then tell me you don’t feel some kind of fullness in the heart when you discover you don’t have to pay to use your smartphone in a distant land. You fill me with that kind of fullness. I love you like a fat child’s smile. Let’s face it, thin children have thin smiles. I’m talking about the kind of smile that elbows a fleshy cheek, which then fills like a balloon and makes Chinese slits of the eyes. The whole face works as a team, comes together for Operation Smile. It’s like a light has been switched on in the universe. You light me up like that.

I love you like the smell of freshly baked bread. It’s a stupid thing, bread. It had to go and fill itself with all kinds of carbs. But when it’s born, when it’s pulled from its warm womb by two careful hands, when it first faces the world – oh! I’ve seen people close their eyes, as if in heaven. Being compared to heaven is surely better than being compared to a rose. I love you like the needle on the weighing scale after a month of assiduous dieting, aka no freshly baked bread. I love you like the Sunday crossword. I love you like my favourite T-shirt (never mind the holes).

I love you like the weekly cigarette I allow myself. The waiting, the restraint, then the trip to the shop, the first hit of tobacco and all those other toxins – bad for me, I know, but I love how you make me heady like that. I love you like the Tamil chatter around me as I stand and sip coffee in the small restaurant near my home, after a six-month stint in the US. Or the UK. Or any of those cold places where coffee means a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. I love you like a puppy dropping a ball at my feet and looking up. Do dogs pray? I bet this one does, like I pray for you.

I love you like a bar of chocolate that’s been out in the sun. I’ll smoosh it all over my fingers and lips and taste you over many days. I love you like the little book in the pocket of the airline seat in front. All those glorious things, fragrances and diamonds, that I might be able to afford in a different life. In this life, I have you, and that will do. I love you like Maggi noodles. I miss you. I want you back. Even if you mean poison.

I love you not like the Taj but like my old room in my parents’ home. I love you like the splat a flip-flop makes when it lands unerringly on a scurrying roach. Not the most romantic thing, I know. But how many other things can you name, quick, that rival this satisfaction? You are my little love bug. I love you like the big kolam in front of the neighbour’s flat during festivals. I look at it and for a minute, just for a minute, you make me want to believe.

Actually, all the women in the office who read it hated that cockroach line. It isn’t in the print version. 🙂 But I wanted something creepy and stalker-ish there, “my little love bug” and so on. Like a razor blade in a bar of chocolate.

I love you like the fan who jumps in joy for his thalaivar movie on release day….

I love you like I read a review in Brangan’s blog esp when I like the movie or even those I think are bad…. because you can’t resist smiling for them…esp when review is from Brangan.

I love you like reading a favorite book of mine

I love you like….when Amish in his interview in Hindu Lit fest spoke about Rajni Kant and Talapathi to our own BRanganji and asked “you have watched the movie right?” And explained his favorite scene and BRji listened with smile on his face.

Aww… How cute was this post BR! I am also sick of red roses, champagne flutes, silvery moonlight and rain soaked silhouettes of hand – holding couples and all that mushy inanity. And leave us not forget the ubiquitous heart. Unfortunately even Amy Farah Fowler’s big reveal on the Big Bang Theory informing viewers that the shape of the heart is based on the contours of a bent over female derrière has done little to detract from its romantic value. More’s the pity.

Personally I think the very idea of romance needs an upgrade. Instead of coming up with extravagant gestures and grandiose declarations of love designed to impress an FB audience, perhaps the focus should be on thoughtfulness, genuine caring and sensitivity. Is there anything more touching than a guy who makes the effort to pee straight or one who has found the courage to take the plunge and snip off the umbilical cord, that keeps him so unhealthily close to mommy dearest? Or a girl who can find it in her heart to keep her hands off the remote during one of those interminable t20 matches and can refrain from the urge to bitch about her better half’s mommy?

I guess I’m the only one who feels deep satisfaction when her flip-flop hit that roach!!! But I love the warm air puff when breaking a freshly baked bread & the chocolate smudges on lips & fingers (& body…). but these days, nothing tops a free wi-fi!

I don’t understand why you have taken up a very inappropriate and insipid topic. What is the relevance of writing about greeting cards. Either the Valentine’s Day or New Year day is far. As you stated: ” Greeting cards still exist… they hadn’t become extinct” is true. There are popular companies- Hallmark, Archies – which have been popular with the present generation youngsters. Now a days we have websites like www,123greetings.com which have greetings for all reasons and occasions and days, call it a Father’s Day or Mother’s Day or Mother’s day. They have number of cliche’s for love and can be personalised. The life of a Greeting card is only one day. Finally, the culture of sending greetings is an imported culture.

You make fun of first-birthday cards, but I love it – it’s obviously not meant for the kid to read right away, but for him/her to read later on in life and imagine the joy they brought to the person who wrote the card. It’s not too unlike a time capsule…

Ram Murali – “I love you like the way my kid sis says ‘varsha paruppu’ as though tamil new year is an ingredient in vengaya sambar” 🙂

That’s hilarious. Brings to mind something my 3 yr old nephew says these days although its not half as decent. He says ‘pandava’ instead of ‘panriya’ particularly only when asking his parents to um clean his backside – as though there is a sixth pandava whose key skill is that!

Your comment reminded me of the time a kannadiga acquaintance of mine mispronounced ‘vatha kuzhambu,’ replacing the ‘va’ sound with ‘wo’ (the way rajni mispronounces “vaazhkai” and says “wozhka!”) resulting in peals of laughter that she couldn’t comprehend! poor thing!

That roach is not disgusting at all! It’s a weird pleasure only few people feel cos the others like me are pretty scared of cockroaches, spiders and what not!

Here’s a joke: I love u like the countless, dazzling stars on a frisky summer morning. Except to here are no stars, really.

I love u as much as I love the ringing, soothing cacophony of my alarm clock on an early Monday morning. I love you like my maths teacher who will never leave even after the bell rings. I love u like the mystical, fragrant smell that routes me in my dentist’s place. I love you like that friend who will never shut up and incessantly gossip. Yes… That’s how much I love you.